Washington, DC ­ April 2, 2001 ­ Through letter balloting that closed at 10 AM EST today, Technical Committee T13 opted not to include a “generic functionality” scheme in one of the standards it is developing for AT Attachment. At T13’s February 21 meeting, the proposal had prompted the withdrawal of a narrower initiative to enable copy protection in removable storage devices. In order to pass the alternative measure and include it in the developing standard, two-thirds of the 22 members eligible to vote needed to express support in writing within a 30-day timeframe.

T13 is a Technical Committee for the National Committee on Information Technology Standards (NCITS), the organization that develops IT standards through a consensus process.

"The generic functionality proposal generated a lot of interest among committee members because it set aside commands that could be used for a number of different things," noted Kate McMillan, director of the Secretariat for NCITS. "A company with a better approach to AV streaming, for example, could take advantage of such a scheme as easily as a company that wanted to implement content protection. Ultimately, though, the committee decides the merits of all proposals through voting and the votes for this proposal were not there."

“Although the standard is continuing on a steady track toward completion,” McMillan added, “it is still possible for other proposals to be brought before the committee. Each one would require a two-thirds vote, however, and given recent developments, it is clear that those votes don’t necessarily come easily.” T13’s next meeting, which is open to all interested parties, is scheduled for April 24-26 in Longmont, Colorado.

About Technical Committee T13

Technical Committee T13 is responsible for all interface standards relating to the popular AT Attachment (ATA) storage interface utilized as the disk drive interface on most personal and mobile computers today. The charter of Technical Committee T13 is to provide a public forum for the development and enhancement of storage interface standards for high volume personal computers. The work of T13, which is a Technical Committee for the National Committee on Information Technology Standards (NCITS), is open to all materially impacted individuals and organizations. The T13 web site is http://www.t13.org.

About NCITS

The National Committee for Information Technology Standards (NCITS) is the forum of choice for information technology developers, producers and users for the creation and maintenance of formal de jure IT standards. NCITS is accredited by, and operates under rules approved by, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). These rules are designed to ensure that voluntary standards are developed by the consensus of directly and materially affected interests. The NCITS web site is http://www.ncits.org.

From 1997-2001, INCITS operated under the name Accredited Standards Committee NCITS, National Committee for Information Technology Standards. From 1961- 1996, NCITS operated under the name Accredited Standards Committee X3, Information Technology.